Opioid use and associated factors among pancreatic cancer patients diagnosed between 2007 and 2015

BACKGROUND: Opioid therapy provides essential pain relief for cancer patients. We used the population‐based Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) linked with Medicare database to identify the patterns of opioid use and associated factors in pancreatic adenocarcinoma cancer patients 66 years or older. PATIENTS AND METHODS: We assessed opioid types, dispensed days, opioid uptake rates, and factors associated with opioid use after pancreatic adenocarcinoma cancer diagnosis in Medicare beneficiaries between 2007 and 2015 from the SEER‐Medicare data. Multivariable regression analysis was used to adjust for a variety of patient‐related factors. RESULTS: We identified a cohort of 10,745 pancreatic cancer patients with a median age of 76 years old and median survival of 7 months; 75% of patients‐initiated opioids after cancer diagnosis. African Americans had the lowest rate of opioid use of 69.1% compared with all other race/ethnicity groups at around 75%. No significant yearly trend of prescribing opioids was detected. Hydrocodone was the most frequently prescribed opioid type. Regression analysis revealed that age ≤80 years, residing in Southern or Western SEER registries, residing in urban/less urban versus big metro areas, having stage IV cancer at diagnosis, longer survival time, and undertaking cancer‐directed treatment or using palliative care were positively associated with opioid initiation, more prescribed opioid types, and higher opioid doses. DISCUSSION: While a range of sociodemographic variables were associated with opioid use in unadjusted analysis, the associations between race/ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic status with opioid initiation disappeared when sociodemographic factors, tumor characteristics, and cancer treatment were adjusted. CONCLUSION: Health care professionals' opioid prescription pattern for pancreatic cancer patients does not parallel the U.S. opioid epidemic. Racial/ethnic disparities in opioid treatment were not identified.